Listening to music or relaxing sounds is a great way to drift off to sleep at night and ensure you get a good rest. You will wake refreshed the next day. There are some excellent sleep apps to help you snooze.

Automatically switch off the music when you fall asleep

If you like listening to music in bed at night, this tip can ensure that you get a good night’s sleep by silencing it after a certain length of time. There are many good sleep benefits and it is worth making an effort to get your eight hours of rest.

Don’t want to leave music playing untill you wake up the next day. Here’s how to switch it off automatically after you fall asleep. You can do this by making use of the timer function of the Clock app and you might not have realised it can do this trick.

Choose your music

You might want to build a playlist in the music app of the sort of music that will send you to sleep. That doesn’t mean boring music, but soothing and relaxing sounds that don’t make you want to jump up and start dancing around.

Start the music playing in the music app.

You should play the music through the iPhone’s speaker. If you use the earphones and fall asleep in bed, they are going to get tangled up when you move around in your sleep.

The speaker is plenty loud enough when the phone is on the table next to your bed.

Set a timer

Open the Clock app and select Timer in the toolbar at the bottom of the screen.

Set the length of time the music is to play for, such as 30 minutes.

Press When Time Ends and a list of alarm sounds is displayed. Swipe down to the bottom of the list and select Stop Playing. Press Set in the top right corner.

Press Start, close your eyes and relax. The music will stop when the timer is triggered.

Sleep music is not the only way to get a good night’s rest and there are some great sleep apps to help you doze off in the evening.

Rain Rain Sleep Sounds

By: Tim Gostony | Size: 39MB | iOS: 8.0 or later

Does the sound of rain relax you and make you want to close your eyes and sleep? If so, then Rain Rain Sleep Sounds is right up your street. It has a collection of rain audio tracks such as Rain Rain Original, Rain Rain 3D, City Rain, Rain on a Tent, Forest Rain, Summer Rain, Thunderstorm and more.

It is not just rain and there is a crackling fire, ocean waves, harbour seagulls, waterfalls and streams. There are even home appliances like a dishwasher and clothes dryer. That seems a bit weird, but if it makes you relax or fall asleep then go for it.

There are timers and you can choose to play the sounds for anywhere between 15 minutes and 25 hours. It’s doubtful anyone wants to listen to rain for over a day, but the shorter times are useful.

You can also set it to switch off at a certain time during the evening, night or day.

This is a great app with lots of soothing sounds and all the options you need.

There is a wide range of sounds and they include items like River, Ocean, Rain, Winds, Waterfall hunder, Urban Rain, Rainy Day and others.

There are plenty of other sounds to choose from if water does not get you to sleep. To mention just a few: Birds, Lounge, Piano, Orchestral, Flute, Music Box, Frogs, Monk Chant and more. There are other things like a cat purring, clocks ticking, a distant train, an oscillating fan, a vacuum cleaner.

There are some strange sounds to sleep by.

There is a timer that enables you to quit the app automatically after a certain length of time. For example, it can be set to turn off after half an hour when you are soundly asleep. There is also an alarm setting to enable you to be woken to sounds too.

This is another excellent app and there is a nice Discovery section where you can choose your mood and pick sounds to match.